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Worthy Ambition
LeDroit Park/Bloomingdale Heritage Trail
7 Separate Schools
The Nathaniel Gage School for white children opened here in 1904, when Washington's public school system was segregated. By the 1930s, even though LeDroit Park was an African American neighborhood, Gage remained white only. "I had to walk by the white elementary school to get to the black Lucretia Mott elementary school at Fourth and W," explained Louise Anderson Young, who grew up at 137 T Street. Young went on to teach at Mott for 18 years. Her students included "children of the people who taught at [Howard] University" and resident of public housing next door to the school. Like many urban schools, Mott remained nearly 100 percent African American long after the Supreme Court outlawed segregation in 1954.
Benjamin O. Davis, Sr., who was named the U.S. Army's first African American general in 1940, attended Mott in the 1880s. As a young boy growing up at 381 W Street, Davis cared for two family cows kept on open land between his house and Howard University. He and friends hunted rabbits and squirrels on the Soldier's Home grounds north of the university.
The Mott School closed in 1977 and was replaced with a parking lot. Desegregated in 1954, the Gage School also closed in the 1970s. Like many of DC's historic school buildings, it has been converted into condominiums.
St. George's Episcopal Church, now at Second and U Street, was organized in 1930 to serve longtime residents as well as refugees from the gentrification and urban renewal of Georgetown and Tenleytown. Father Adolphus A. Birch, who led the church until 1966, is remembered for his warmth and easy manner. "He made me want to come to church," recalled Carolyn Giles Smith, who grew up nearby. The current church building opened in 1969. |